eeef closed its first aggregated street lighting infrastructure transaction to upgrade among others UNESCO World Heritage site of Évora in Alentejo Central in Portugal

On December 27^th 2018, eeef signed an forfaiting facility of €12m to finance renovation of the street lighting infrastructure in Alentejo Central Region represented by CIMAC (Comunidade Intermunicipal do Alentejo Central) including the UNESCO World Heritage site of Évora. The signing of this agreement illustrates successful implementation of eeef’s strategy from project development to financing.

The European Commission Technical Assistance facility managed by eeef was instrumental in supporting CIMAC with the feasibility study that resulted in aggregating numerous smaller projects into a single sizeable project to upgrade 56,354 street lighting luminaries. Following a public call for tender to upgrade and service, the project was awarded to I-Quatro, a project company jointly owned by I-Sete (45%) and FomentInvest (55%).

The project envisages replacement of existing sodium vapour lamps by energy efficient LED luminaries across Alentejo Central within a 9 month construction period. This upgrade is expected to realise 73.65% in primary energy and CO₂ savings annually compared to baseline, representing 40,654 MWh and 6,661 tCO2e respectively. In addition, the project will also generate € 7.1 million of monetary benefits for the 14 municipalities over a 12-year period of concession.

André Espenica, First-Secretary of CIMAC, commented: ‘eeef was very important for CIMAC in order to demonstrate to the decision makers that this was not a change driven by impulse, but rather a sustainable project in which we would improve the service level, the quality of the material and the relation that each municipality has with public lighting along with achieving huge economic and environmental savings. CIMAC municipalities will be able to make a change in a couple of years (i.e. after planning and construction) that would have taken more than a decade to achieve otherwise’.

The selected project company will start with installations in May 2019.

CIMAC is an inter-municipal community constituted in 2009 in the Central Alentejo region in Portugal and comprises of 14 municipalities: Alandroal, Arraiolos, Borba, Estremoz, Évora, Montemor-o-Novo, Mora, Mourão, Portela, Redondo, Reguengos de Monsaraz, Vendas Novas, Viana do Alentejo and Vila Viçosa.

The European Energy Efficiency Fund (eeef) S.A., SICAV-SIF is a “societé d’investissement à capital veriable” governed by Luxembourg law and was initiated by the European Commission in cooperation with the European Investment Bank. The initial capitalization provided by the European Commission was increased with contributions from the European Investment Bank, Cassa Depositi e Prestiti as well as the Investment Manager Deutsche Bank.